| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: and particularly to the latter: face the realities of your own soul
and body; know thyself! And in this last admonition, we mean that this
knowledge should not consist of some vague shopworn generalities about
the nature of woman--woman as created in the minds of men, nor woman
putting herself on a romantic pedestal above the harsh facts of this
workaday world. Women can attain freedom only by concrete, definite
knowledge of themselves, a knowledge based on biology, physiology and
psychology.
Nevertheless it would be wrong to shut our eyes to the vision of a
world of free men and women, a world which would more closely resemble
a garden than the present jungle of chaotic conflicts and fears. One
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: XVI
The Social Life of the Chinese Woman
The manners and customs of the Chinese, and their social
characteristics, have employed many pens and many tongues, and
will continue to furnish all inexhaustible field for students of
sociology, of religion, of philosophy, of civilization, for
centuries to come. Such studies, however, scarcely touch the
province of the practical, at least as yet, for one principal
reason--that the subject is so vast, the data are so infinite, as
to overwhelm the student rather than assist him in sound
generalizations.
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: janitor of the Chippewa High School. A powerful man, slightly
crippled by rheumatism, loquacious, lively, fond of his family,
proud of his neat gray frame house and his new cement sidewalk
and his carefully tended yard and garden patch. In all her life
Tessie had never seen a caress exchanged between her parents.
Nowadays Ma Golden had little occasion for finding fault with
Tessie's evening diversion. She no longer had cause to say,
"Always gaddin' downtown, or over to Cora's or somewhere, like
you didn't have a home to stay in. You ain't been in a evening
this week, only when you washed your hair."
Tessie had developed a fondness for sunsets viewed from the back
One Basket |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: empty roadways lined by strings of gas lamps. He walked through
Squares, Places, Ovals, Commons, through monotonous streets with
unknown names where the dust of humanity settles inert and hopeless
out of the stream of life. He walked. And suddenly turning into a
strip of a front garden with a mangy grass plot, he let himself
into a small grimy house with a latch-key he took out of his
pocket.
He threw himself down on his bed all dressed, and lay still for a
whole quarter of an hour. Then he sat up suddenly, drawing up his
knees, and clasping his legs. The first dawn found him open-eyed,
in that same posture. This man who could walk so long, so far, so
The Secret Agent |
